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Histories of Post-Mortem Contagion

Infectious Corpses and Contested Burials

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  • © 2018

Overview

Editors:
  1. Christos Lynteris

    1. Department of Social Anthropology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, United Kingdom

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  2. Nicholas H A Evans

    1. Department of Anthropology, London School of Economics, London, United Kingdom

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    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  • Explores for the first time the social, cultural and medical history of human corpses and burials comparatively
  • Offers insight into an international selection of epidemics from the fourteenth century to the present day
  • Reveals findings of interest to historians, archaeologists, anthropologists and public health experts
  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Part of the book series: Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Modern History (MBSMH)

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Table of contents (10 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xvii
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  2. Introduction: The Challenge of the Epidemic Corpse

    • Christos Lynteris, Nicholas H. A. Evans
    Pages 1-25

  3. Failed Ritual? Medieval Papal Funerals and the Death of Clement VI (1352)

    • Joëlle Rollo-Koster
    Pages 27-53

  4. Fear and the Corpse: Cholera and Plague Riots Compared

    • Samuel Cohn Jr.
    Pages 55-81

  5. Bloeming-Typhoidtein: Epidemic Jingoism and the Typhoid Corpse in South Africa

    • Jacob Steere-Williams
    Pages 83-108

  6. Suspicious Corpses: Body Dumping and Plague in Colonial Hong Kong

    • Christos Lynteris
    Pages 109-133

  7. Composing and Decomposing Bodies: Visualizing Death and Disease in an Era of Global War, Pestilence, and Famine, 1913–1923

    • Michael Anton Budd
    Pages 135-164

  8. Shrouded Corpses, Walking Cadavers: The Shifting of ‘the Choleras’ in Depictions of Southeastern Captivity

    • Lizzie Oliver
    Pages 165-187

  9. The Burial Pit as Bio-historical Archive

    • Lukas Engelmann
    Pages 189-211

  10. Postscript: Epidemic History and the Ebola Present

    • James Fairhead
    Pages 213-221

  11. Erratum to: Histories of Post-Mortem Contagion

    • Christos Lynteris, Nicholas H. A. Evans
    Pages E1-E1

  12. Back Matter

    Pages 223-230
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Keywords

About this book

This edited volume draws historians and anthropologists together to explore the contested worlds of epidemic corpses and their disposal. Why are burials so frequently at the center of disagreement, recrimination and protest during epidemics? Why are the human corpses produced in the course of infectious disease outbreaks seen as dangerous, not just to the living, but also to the continued existence of society and civilization? Examining cases from the Black Death to Ebola, contributors challenge the predominant idea that a single, universal framework of contagion can explain the political, social and cultural importance and impact of the epidemic corpse. 

Reviews

“The book … is an essential and powerful work of compilation of diverse experiences related to epidemics, body dumping, fear of contamination, hasty burials, isolation, plague riots, all themes of the greatest relevance today. … It is written in a language accessible to all audiences and achieves the goal of the series Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Modern History to cut across conventional academic boundaries through stimulating interdisciplinary approaches. … This book definitely held my interest.” (Simone Rodrigues Pinto, Human Remains and Violence, Vol. 8 (1), April, 2022)

Editors and Affiliations

  • Department of Social Anthropology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, United Kingdom

    Christos Lynteris

  • Department of Anthropology, London School of Economics, London, United Kingdom

    Nicholas H A Evans

About the editors

Christos Lynteris is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews, UK, and Principal Investigator of the ERC-funded research project Visual Representations of the Third Plague Pandemic. He is the author of The Spirit of Selflessness in Maoist China (Palgrave, 2012) and Ethnographic Plague (Palgrave, 2016). 

Nicholas H. A. Evans is a Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics, UK. His work focuses on understanding the comparative and historical nature of doubt and uncertainty, and he was a member (2014-17) of the Visual Representations of the Third Plague Pandemic project at the University of Cambridge.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Histories of Post-Mortem Contagion

  • Book Subtitle: Infectious Corpses and Contested Burials

  • Editors: Christos Lynteris, Nicholas H A Evans

  • Series Title: Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Modern History

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62929-2

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: History, History (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-62928-5Published: 11 January 2018

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-87431-9Published: 04 June 2019

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-62929-2Published: 13 December 2017

  • Series ISSN: 2947-9142

  • Series E-ISSN: 2947-9150

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XVII, 230

  • Number of Illustrations: 8 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: History of Science, World History, Global and Transnational History, History of Medicine

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